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Friday, 6 April 2012

PHONOLOGY

What is phonology?

Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in natural
languages.

Discussion

The phonological system of a language includes

an inventory of sounds
and their features, and

rules which specify how
sounds interact with each other.

Phonology is just one of several aspects of language. It is related to
other aspects such as phonetics, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics.

Here is an illustration that shows the place of phonology in an
interacting hierarchy of levels in linguistics:

Comparison: Phonology and phonetics

Phonetics …

Phonology …

Is the basis for phonological analysis.

Is the basis for further work in morphology, syntax, discourse, and
orthography design.

Analyzes the production of all human speech sounds, regardless of
language.

Analyzes the sound patterns of a particular language by

determining which
phonetic sounds are significant, and

explaining how these
sounds are interpreted by the native speaker.

Models of phonology

Different models of phonology contribute to our knowledge of phonological
representations and processes:

In classical
phonemics,phonemes
and their possible combinations are central.

In standard generative
phonology, distinctive features are central. A
stream of speech is portrayed as linear sequence of discrete
sound-segments. Each segment is composed of simultaneously occurring
features.

·In non-linear models of phonology,
a stream of speech is represented as multidimensional, not simply as a linear
sequence of sound segments. These non-linear models grew out of generative
phonology:

An underlying
representation is the most basic form of a word before any phonological
rules have been applied to it. Underlying representations show what a
native speaker knows about the abstract underlying phonology of the
language.

A phonetic
representation is the form of a word that is spoken and heard.

·Phonological rules

Phonological rules map underlying representations
onto phonological representations. They delete, insert, or change segments,
or change the features of segments.

Distinctive features make it possible to capture
the generalities of phonological rules.

·Linearity

A stream of speech is portrayed as a sequence of
discrete sound segments. Each segment is composed of simultaneously occurring
features.

What is autosegmental phonology?

Definition

Autosegmental phonology is a non-linear approach to phonology that allows
phonological processes, such as tone and vowel harmony, to be independent of
and extend beyond individual consonants and vowels.

As a result, the phonological processes may influence more than one vowel
or consonant at a time.

Multi-dimensional representations

Autosegmental phonology treats phonological representations as
multi-dimensional, having several tiers. Each tier is made up of a linear
arrangement of segments. The tiers are linked to each other by association
lines that indicate how the segments on each tier are to be pronounced at the
same time.

Examples (Mende, Sierra Leone)

·In an autosegmental analysis of Mende, tone
is not a property of individual vowels or syllables,
but is a property of the word as a whole.

·In the
examples in the following table, the tone given in the left most column is
the tone specified for all the words in that row, regardless of how many
syllables a word contains.

Tone

1 syllable

2 syllables

3 syllables

H

nda@ ‘mouth’

ngu@lu@ ‘tree’

kE@lE@lE@ ‘fraction’

L

kpa$ ‘debt’

be$le$ ‘trousers’

kpa$ka$l"Ý ‘chair’

HL

mbu^ ‘owl’

ke@nya$ ‘uncle’

fe@la$ma$ ‘junction’

LH

mba& ‘rice’

na$vo@ ‘money’

nda$vu@la@ ‘sling’

LHL

mba ‘companion’

nya$ha^ ‘woman’

n"Ýk"Ûl"Ý ‘peanut’

Formal representation

Here are some examples of formal representations of HL Mende tone:

What is a syllable?

Definition

A syllable is a unit of sound composed of

a central peak of
sonority (usually a vowel), and

the consonants that
cluster around this central peak.

Discussion

Syllable structure, which is the combination of allowable segments and
typical sound sequences, is language specific.

Parts

Parts

Description

Optionality

Onset

Initial segment of a syllable

Optional

Rhyme

Core of a syllable, consisting of a nucleus and coda (see below)

Obligatory

– Nucleus

Central segment of a syllable

Obligatory

– Coda

Closing segment of a syllable

Optional

Example (English)

Here is an example of the syllable structure of the English word limit:

Kinds

Here are some kinds of syllables:

Kind

Description

Example

Heavy

Has a branching rhyme. All syllables with a branching nucleus (long
vowels) are considered heavy. Some languages treat syllables with a short
vowel (nucleus followed by a consonant (coda) as heavy.

CV:C, CVCC, CVC

Light

Has a non-branching rhyme (short vowel). Some languages treat syllables
with a short vowel(nucleus) followed by a consonant (coda) as light.

CV, CVC

Closed

Ends with a consonant coda.

CVC, CVCC, VC

Open

Has no final consonant

CV

Diagram

Here is a diagram of a syllable:

What is metrical phonology?

Definition

Metrical phonology is a phonological theory concerned with organizing
segments into groups of relative prominence. Segments are organized into syllables,
syllables into metrical feet, feet into phonological words, and words into
larger units.

This organization is represented formally by metrical trees and grids.

The internal syllable structure in the above figure has been omitted and
is represented by triangles. Within the syllable, s and w
refer to stronger and weaker degrees of sonorance, not stress, and s
corresponds to the syllable nucleus, which is the most sonorant segment in a
syllable.

In metrical trees, the strongest unit of the word is the one that is
dominated by s all the way up the tree.

Example (metrical grid)

Here is an example of a metrical grid of the word metricality:

Stress within feet and words can be represented as a metrical grid:

In a grid, the most prominent unit is the one that is dominated by the
most number of x’s.

What is lexical phonology?

Definition

Lexical phonology is an approach to phonology that accounts for the
interactions of morphology and phonology in the word building process.

The lexicon plays a central, productive role in the theory. It consists of
ordered levels, which are the domain for certain phonological or
morphological processes.

Discussion

Here is a diagram of the overall structure of the lexical phonology model:

Components

The following are crucial components of lexical phonology:

·Lexical and post-lexical rules

Here is a table that compares lexical and
post-lexical rules:

Lexical rules …

Post-lexical rules …

Apply only within words.

Apply within words or across word boundaries.

Are prone to exceptions.

Do not have exceptions.

Require morphological information.

Require syntactic information, or no grammatical information at all.

Must be structure-preserving.

Are not necessarily structure-preserving.

Will not be blocked by pauses.

Can be blocked by pauses.

Apply first.

Apply later.

·Levels

English has between two and four levels of
morphology in the lexicon. The levels within the lexicon are ordered so that,
to get to Level 3 from Level 1, a word must pass through Level 2. A word
cannot go back to a previous level once it has left one level and gone on to
another level.

Halle and Mohanan propose the following four
levels of morphology in the lexicon:

Level 1: Class 1
derivation, irregular inflection

Level 2: Class 2
derivation

Level 3: Compounding

Level 4: Regular
inflection

We will consider the first two levels of
affixation because they differ significantly. Here is a table that compares
affixation on Levels 1 and 2: